


The Thin Line in Between

by PhantomWriter



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Odin (Marvel)'s A+ Parenting, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:34:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23477833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhantomWriter/pseuds/PhantomWriter
Summary: Hela dies in the hands of Surtur and wakes in the middle of the raging war between Asgard and Muspelheim a couple of millennia ago.
Relationships: Frigga | Freyja & Hela (Marvel), Hela & Loki & Thor (Marvel), Hela & Loki (Marvel), Hela & Thor (Marvel)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 86





	The Thin Line in Between

Hela awoke with a scream torn from her throat, along with anger and the lingering heat that engulfed her in her final moments.

At least, what she supposedly thought was her last.

There was a distinctive smell of singed flesh that Hela registered to be coming off of her. It was half of her left arm clutching a sword and a good portion of her side that was adorned with embers. She sat up, clutching the burnt skin with a free hand—her other palm stuck with her weapon—when two firm hands held her by the shoulders to lay her back. 

“Shh. Let me handle this, my child. You’ll be healed in no time.”

Frigga—how long had Hela last seen her face—hovered over her, worry carved deep on her youthful face. She wore her hair in a single bun above her head, the one Hela distantly remembered she wore during the battles Odin brought her to.

“You,” Hela began, utterly confused. Wasn’t Frigga in Valhalla?

“Yes, me,” Frigga answered, a wry smile making its way on her lips. The cold brought by her healing magic soothed Hela’s burns, a comfortable chill suffusing throughout her body. “Were you expecting someone else?”

“No,” Hela said, quite unbelieving. Was this an illusion? A contingency plan Odin placed for her once his timely death arrived? “What are you doing here?”

“It’s the battlefield.” It wasn’t the answer Hela expected. “I’m right where I should be.”

Hela gathered her bearings, allowing Frigga to repair the scorched skin. The weapon clattered on the ground with a heavy thud on the blackened ground of hardened lava. Hela noted that she was inside an infirmary tent where the smell of death was in the air as she laid there on a cot, surrounded by the dying and heavily wounded.

Frigga was right: it was the battlefield. A battlefield in memory that was calling to Hela.

“Muspelheim,” she sneered in realization. What an ironic twist. “Of all the places in the Nine Realms to imprison me to, it has to be in this wasteland.”

Frigga’s magic ceased its work, and back at her face was the furrow in her brows. “My dear, what are you talking about?”

When Frigga reached for Hela’s hand, the touch felt real and warm and with concern that came from Frigga’s seemingly infinite reserve. Hela was disgusted at this seamless recreation of Frigga, swatting the hand away like an offending fly, and at the same time impressed at the amount of effort Odin had put into this.

If nothing else were real, then there was no point to pick up her sword. Frigga called after, and Hela could feel strings of her magic attempting to keep her in line and failing.

Hela marched outside the tent, bearing nothing but her torn battle armor, ready to stab the next familiar face that she would see. She went to seek Odin, wanting to have the satisfaction of killing an image of him over and over.

The next illusion she came across came in the form of a huge, black-furred creature.

Fenris nudged her snout towards her, pushing her backward. Hela instinctively placed her hand on the side of Fenris’s cheek. She felt just as real, just as true the same way Frigga seemed—

Hela stopped, wide-eyed when she looked up at her. There was a pulse that was coming from Fenris, and it wasn’t the same when Hela resurrected her.

It was  _ life  _ coursing through Fenris’s veins.

“No. It can’t be,” Hela breathed.

Fenris looked down at her, tilting her head in an adoring fashion as if asking  _ why it couldn’t be possible _ .

“What is happening, Fenris?”

Fenris let out a whine and pushed Hela to her side. Hela needed not another word and mounted her. It wasn’t long when the uproar of battle could be heard, of the stench of death and charred bodies to be stronger, and Fenris brought her right in the middle of the fray where Odin and Surtur were in a standoff.

Odin, with his two eyes glazed with ferocity and bloodlust, wielded Gungnir and Mjolnir. At the arrival of his executioner, Odin didn’t interrupt his dance of violence, raining the brunt of Odinforce on the Fire Giant and cleared a long swathe of fire demons that cornered and pounced on him.

This was the Odin Hela remembered.

Hela easily caught the hammer that flew towards her. She swung the Mjolnir and threw it across the field, letting it raze and lay waste. Bodies fell into heaps of black dust when Hela came off of Fenris, and there Surtur stood, the very same entity that killed her, killed the Goddess of Death.

Surtur brandished his sword against the large beams of spiked blades that Hela conjured and pulled from above. Surtur was aggressive and quick to retaliate, though he was unable to match the combined strength of Odin’s full force and the aid of his Executioner who managed to pin the Fire Giant in place with another set of colossal swords that came from the ground and shot up through Surtur’s molten feet and torso. 

If Hela created another one that resembled Surtur’s Twilight Sword as an act of poetic retribution, none was the wiser.

Hela aimed for Surtur’s crown, planned to obliterate it for good and let his ashes stain the ground of his realm when Odin was immediately beside her and gripped her shoulder. Hela seethed at the touch and disentangled herself. Odin mistook her hostile reaction to his interruption.

If not for the presence of Surtur, it would be Odin’s neck torn under Hela’s blade.

“Hela, stop,” Odin commanded.

“And why should I?”

Odin’s face flickered with something very familiar. “Surtur is the one who will bring upon Ragnarok, as you know.”

_ He already did, _ was what made it at the tip of Hela’s tongue, but Odin didn’t know that. Not this Odin, at least, if she was understanding the situation correctly. “All the more reason to finish him for good,” Hela reasoned, the epiphany appeasing her adrenaline and fury for the meantime. “Unless, of course, you’re interested to see Asgard fall,” she taunted, unable to resist.

“If it is the will of the Norns, then Ragnarok will come upon us in due time,” Odin answered calmly. “For now, Surtur can give us what no one in this realm could.”

The Eternal Flame. Odin snatched it from Surtur and weakened the Fire Giant, turning him smaller and less ferocious. Odin turned his back on the restrained Surtur who spat curses at the Allfather and Hela. He promised painful deaths for them alongside Asgard’s downfall.

“Let us go, Hela,” Odin called to her, proceeding ahead. His back was unguarded, and Hela could easily stab him at the back before the chance could pass.

Not now, she realized. Her strength was hardly on par with Odin’s at this time. It would be millennia before Odin would weaken, and it was largely out of the same amount of time he spent imprisoning her.

Odin could wait, and so was Surtur for they both deserved a slow, special death of her making.

Hela let the Mjolnir fly, the force more than adequate to knock Surtur unconscious. If by chance it decollated Surtur, then it was due to his weakness.

* * *

Hela left the banquet hall with disinterest with drunk warriors and meaningless applause. These were the very same people who disparaged and had forgotten the glory she brought to Asgard alongside Odin.

It was always the weak who celebrated easily after a short battle.

She watched Fenris devour a dozen goats before she sat down, sated and full beside Hela. It was the first moment of tranquility she found since…

Hela didn’t know since when. She was born at the height of the war between Malekith and Bor, grew up when Odin started his campaign and by the end of it was locked away in Helheim. She had attempted numerous times to escape and yet Odin’s power held firm only until his death. Then, there was the matter of subjugating what was supposedly a subservient Asgard, and unbeknownst to her, Odin had two weak sons who undoubtedly grew up being coddled and pampered, princelings who never knew real bloodshed and conquest. They were clever and keen enough, Hela would give them that, to know that they couldn’t possibly beat her toe-to-toe.

To think that she would have such feeble siblings was contemptible. It was laughable of them to bear the name Odinson. They were nothing but ants to her boot, next in line for the throne that they would never deserve in their pathetic lives. She, who was born in the midst of battle and knew hard-fought victory at a very young age, was the queen Asgard needed the most.

And yet the Norns decided to bring her here back, back in time to meddle with the prior history. Hela never concerned herself with the wills of the Norns, but it was hard to deny that they sought to achieve something by bringing Hela to the fray, alive and with her memories of previous time intact. Did they want her to bring Odin’s death much earlier? Did they want her to rule in his place and have Asgard rule the cosmos? If this was their hand, the Norns told her naught upon returning here.

Hela entertained that this was Odin’s making, but what purpose would it serve to have his daughter brought this far back in time? If Odin so wished, he would rather trap her in an eternity of torment, not change the timeline where she could wipe him and his precious sons out of existence. The Allfather was out of the question.

Very few beings were capable of this, of that Hela was aware. She was also conscious that she never made contact with any of those entities.

Whoever made it possible was giving Hela another opportunity. For what, Hela would find out, but for now, with her adequate foreknowledge and the return of her full strength, she could think and make her moves as shrewd as the Allfather.

Soon, she would be sitting in Asgard’s throne as its queen, the realms at her feet. 

* * *

**tbc**


End file.
